KATIE SALEN
Lucas Artists Fellow

Katie Salen is a game designer and Director of the graduate Design and Technology program at Parsons the New School For Design.

Salen has worked on a range of projects for clients such as Microsoft, SIGGRAPH, the Hewlett Foundation, XMediaLab, the Design Institute, gameLab, and mememe Productions. Co-author (with Eric Zimmerman) of Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals (MIT Press 2004) and The Game Design Reader: A Rules of Play Anthology (MIT Press 2005), she is also member of Playground, design team focused on large-scale, experimental, real-world games. Katie is a contributing writer for RES magazine, and worked as an animator on Richard Linklater’s critically acclaimed animated feature Waking Life. In 2003-04 Katie partnered with screenwriter and director Hampton Fancher (Minus Man; Bladerunner) on a project for the XEN division of Microsoft to develop an animated storytelling experience distributed through Xbox Live, and has helped curate programs at the Lincoln Center, Cinematexas, ZKM, Exploding Cinema, and the Walker Art Center on machinima, the practice of creating animated films using game engines. She has lectured extensively on game design and game culture both nationally and internationally.

At the Lucas Artists Programs Salen will be working with Nancy Nowacek and Marina Zurkow on a project for the ISEA2006 Symposium/Zero One San José: A Global Festival of Art on the Edge, to be held in August 2006 in San Jose, CA.